into her grey yes. She shot out the next question as something like a challenge. “You mean?a criminal?”
“My dear young lady! No, no, no!”
“An adventuress, then?”
Barbara struck her hand against the edge of the table.
“A trouble-maker of some kind, is that it?” she cried. “Malicious? Or spiteful? Or tale-bearing?”
“I say to you,” declared Professor Rigaud, “that Fay Seton was none of those things. Forgive me if I, the old cynic, insist that in her puritanical way she was altogether gentle and goodhearted.”
“Then what’s left?”
“What is left, mademoiselle, is the real answer to the mystery. The mystery of the unpleasant rumours that began to creep through Chartres and the surrounding country. The mystery of why our sober, conservative Mr. Howard Brooke, her prospective father-in-law, cursed her aloud in a public place like the Credit Lyonnais Bank . . .”
Under her breath Barbara uttered a curious sound which was either incredulity or contempt, either disbelieving this or dismissing it as of no importance whatever. Professor Rigaud blinked at her.
“You doubt me, mademoiselle?”
“No! Of course not!” Her colour went up. “What do
“And you, Mr. Hammond: you say little?”
“Yes,” Miles replied absently. “I was?
“Looking at the photograph?”
“Yes. Looking at the photograph.”
Professor Rigaud opened his eyes delightedly.
“You are impressed, eh?”
“There’s a kind of spell about it,” said Miles, brushing his hand across his forehead. “The eyes there in the picture! And the way she’s got her head turned. Confound the photograph!”
“He, Miles Hammond, was a tired man only recently recovered from a very long illness. He wanted peace. He wanted to live in seclusion in the New Forest, among old books, with his sister to keep house for him until her marriage. He didn’t want to have his imagination stirred. Yet he sat staring at the photograph, staring at it under the candlelight until its subtle colours grew blurred, while Professor Rigaud went on.
“These rumours about Fay Seton . . .”
“What rumours?” Barbara asked sharply.
Blandly, Professor Rigaud ignored this.
“For myself, blind bat and owl that I am, I had heard nothing of them. Harry Brooke and Fay Seton became engaged to be married in the middle of July. Now I must tell you about the twelfth of August.
“On that day, which seemed to me like any other day, I am writing a critical article for the
“It was very warm. All morning the sky had been heavy and dark, with fits of vague prowling thunder and sometimes spatters of rain. But nothing more than a drizzle; no cloudburst; nothing to let the heat out and give us peace. So I went into the Credit Lyonnais. And the first person I saw, coming out of the manager’s office, was Mr. Howard Brooke.
“Odd?
“Rather odd, yes! For I had imagined he would be at his office, like the conscientious fellow he was.
“Mr. Brooke regarded me very strangely. He wore a raincoat and a tweed cap. Over his left arm was hung the crook of a cane, and in his right hand he carried an old black-leather brief-case. It seemed to me even then that his light-blue eyes looked strangely watery; nor had I ever noticed before, in a man so fit, that there was sagging flesh under his chin.
“’My dear Brooke!’ I said to him, and shook hands with him in spite of himself. His hand felt very limp. ‘My dear Brooke,’ I said, ‘this is an unexpected pleasure! How is everyone at home? How is your good wife, and Harry, and Fay Seton?’
“’Fay Seton?’ he said to me. ‘Damn Fay Seton.’
“Ouf!
“He had spoken in English, but so loudly that one or two persons in the bank glanced round. He flushed with embarrassment, this good man, but he was so troubled that he did not really seem to care. He marched me to the front of the bank, beyond hearing of anyone else. Then he opened the brief-case, and showed me.
“Inside, in solitary state, were four slender packets of English banknotes. Each packet contained twenty-five twenty-pound notes: two thousand pounds.
“’I had to send to Paris for these,’ he told me, and his hands were trembling. ‘I thought, you know, that English notes would be more tempting. If Harry won’t give the woman up, I must simply buy her off. Now you must excuse me.’
“and he straightened his shoulders, shut up the brief-case, and walked out of the bank without another word.
“My friends, have you ever been hit very hard in the stomach? So that your eyesight swims, and your stomach rises up, and you feel suddenly like a rubber toy squeezed together? That was how I felt then. I forgot to write a cheque. I forgot everything. I walked back to my hotel, through a drizzling rain that was turning black and greasy the cobblestones of the Place des Epars.
“But it was impossible to write, as I discovered. About half an hour later, at a quarter past three, the telephone rang. I think I guessed what it might be about, though I did not guess what it was. It was Mama Brooke, Mrs. Georgina Brooke, and she said:
“This time I am thoroughly well frightened, and I confess it!
“I got out my Ford; I drove out to their house as fast as I could, and with an even more execrable style of driving than usual. Still it would not rain properly, would not burst a hole in this hollow of thundery heat that enclosed us. When I reached Beauregard, it was like a deserted house. I called aloud in the downstairs hall, but nobody answered. Then I went into the drawing-room, where I found Mama Brooke sitting bolt upright on a sofa, making heroic efforts to keep her face from working, but with a damp handkerchief clutched in her hand.
“’Madame,’ I said to her, ‘what is happening? What is wrong between your good husband and Miss Seton?’
“And she cried out to me, having nobody else to whom she could appeal.
“’I don’t know!’ she said; it was plain she meant it. ‘Howard won’t tell me. Harry says it’s all nonsense, whatever it is, but he won’t tell me anything either. Nothing is real any longer. Only two days ago . . .’
“Only two days before, it appeared, there had been a shocking and unexplained incident.
“Near Beauregard, on the main road to Le Mans, lived a market-gardener named Jules Fresnac, who supplied them with eggs and fresh vegetables. Jules Fresnac had two children?a daughter of seventeen, a son of sixteen?to whom Fay Seton had been very kind, so that the whole Fresnac family was very fond of her. But two days ago Fay Seton had met Jules Fresnac driving his cart in the road, in the white road with the tall poplars and grain-fields on either side. Jules Fresnac got down from his cart, his face bluish and swollen with fury, and shouted and screamed at her until she put up a hand to cover her eyes.
“All this was witnessed by Mama Brooke’s maid, Alice. Alice was too far away to catch what was being said; the man’s voice, in any case, was so hoarse with rage as to be almost unrecognizable. But, as Fay Seton turned around to hurry away, Jules Fresnac picked up a stone and flung it at her.
“A pretty story, h?”
“This was what Mama Brooke told me, with helpless gestures of her hands, while she sat on the sofa in that drawing-room.
“’And now,’ she said, ‘Howard has gone out to that tower, to Henry the Fourth’s tower, to meet poor Fay. Professor Rigaud, you have go to help us. You have to do something.’
“’But, madame! What can do?”
